Council of Europe calls for an end to institutionalization of persons with disabilities
Yesterday in a formal “comment” the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammerberg, called for an end to inhuman treatment of persons with disabilities. Referring to the need to put a stop to impunity for deaths and abuses of persons within psychiatric and social care institutions, and drawing from the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), Commissioner Hammarberg emphasises the right to independent living. His comment also points to the continued failure of States to develop appropriate systems of community-based services.
This failure, the continued reliance on institutional care and the associated risks of human rights abuses, places on states “an obligation to set up and support truly independent national monitoring bodies, and to ensure adequate resources for such bodies”, he says. The widely accepted purpose of such bodies is to prevent torture, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment of people in such institutions.